URGENT! ConU Student Arrested

Please forward this widely if you are in Montreal and abroad to let the
public know. Thank you.

Crackdown on Arabs and Muslims Continues at Concordia University

Yesterday, Tuesday Mar. 11, Concordia Management student Nidal Al-Alul was
detained and charged with ‘uttering death threats’.

At around 3pm yesterday, Nidal was holding a discussion with non-student
members of ‘Israel for Free’ in front of a table they had set-up beside
Hillel [the Jewish student group] on the Mezzanine of Concordia’s main
downtown campus where students usually hold information tables.

One of the people Nidal was talking to accused him of having ‘a weak
personality’. Nidal negated that by saying: who knows, I may be famous in 2
years. The Israel for Free person publicly interpreted that statement
claiming that Nidal plans to blow himself up. Nidal immediately descended to
the security office of the campus to denounce these false, public
allegations and file a report against the group. Simultaneously, security
was summoned up to the Mezzanine by Hillel and Israel for Free to report
Nidal’s so-called ‘death threats’. An SPHR [Solidarity for Palestinian Human
Rights-Concordia] member who happened to be nearby asked Jean Brisebois,
head of Security at Concordia, how non-students could file a complaint.
Brisebois said that the Mezzanine is a public space and that Israel for Free
may have been invited by Hillel.

Minutes later, security asked Nidal to go back to their office to sign his
statement. That is when two police men walked into the office and closed the
door. Two more cops followed. When the first two came out, and were
approached by an SPHR member, they said that Nidal was arrested. When asked
for their badge numbers, they constantly refused to give them. They were
pursued to their cars and their numbers were recorded.

Two more cops then went in to the security office were Nidal was being held.
When asked if Nidal had been read his rights to, they said that he had, and
added that he was not arrested, but was there willingly talking. Nidal was
then allowed to leave. He said that what the cops had told the SPHR members
was not true.

At 9pm, SPHR Montreal got a phone call from Nidal saying that he was
arrested and taken to the Guy-Rene Levesque police station. SPHR’s lawyer
had a chance to speak to Nidal over the phone, and said that he was
hyperventilating and that he was given a statement by the police and asked
to sign it.

Several colleagues and supporters showed up at the police station and stayed
out after police had locked the doors for the night. At around 1am, the
police told us that Nidal would spend the night under interrogation and
would be sent to the Municipal Court between 7 and 9am the next morning
[Wednesday] where he would appear in front of a judge when summoned at any
time of the day.

Supporters plan to gather at the police station before Nidal is transferred
to the Municipal Court, and a major rally of support is scheduled to be
present at the Municipal Court of Montréal, located at 775 Gosford Street,
near City Hall (Champ-de-Mars Metro Station) as of 9am today, Wednesday,
Mar. 12.

Over the past couple of years, Concordia’s administration has fought to
seize the ‘public space’, granted to the Israel for Free non-students, from
its own students. SPHR activities on and off campus have been fought by the
university for alleged ‘security concerns’. Last September, a group of
students who planned a sit-in to protest war-criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s
coming to Concordia University were charged with ‘illegal assembly’ at their
own school, during school hours. Mr. Brisbois, head of security, stated that
if it were up to him, Muslim students would not have a place to pray at
Concordia. The lobby of the main campus is no longer available for hosting
information tables as a result of the sit-in of Sep. 9 that resulted in
police’s beating and pepper-spraying the students. Last November, Concordia
obtained a court injunction to stop Svend Robinson a member of Canadian
Parliament from speaking at Concordia. Last April, Mr. Robinson defied the
occupying Israeli forces’ barring him from entering part of Palestinian soil
that they occupy.

Hillel has displayed forms to enlist foreign volunteers in the occupying
Israeli Defence Forces. Also, Hillel has distributed racist and
hate-literature against Arabs and Muslims; most recently a pamphlet that
read ‘We’ve JIHAD enough. It’s time to stop using the Koran to justify
murder’ [insinuating that the Qur’an does indeed call for murder].

The day is expected to be long at court. Please try to show up and bring
friends along.

____________________________________________________________
Karameh was formed to fight the ongoing attempt to criminalize Palestinian organization at Concordia and around the world. It is a part of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights [SPHR-Montreal] and is committed to issues of
social justice. 'Karameh' means Dignity in Arabic and is the name of a town from which the Palestinian resistance launched its first effective attack in the effort to reclaim their land and rights. For more info - karameh@sphr.org  514.905.5101|SPHR|Karameh|1118 St-Catherine O.| Suite 405|Montreal|H3B 1H5